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Abstract

The proposed paper examines the overlooked role of former exiled Populists (Narodniki) in shaping Soviet nationalities policy through their continued ethnographic study of the Sakha (Yakut) people of Northeast Siberia. I argue that the former Populists’ late imperial research laid the groundwork for the Yakutization campaign of the 1920s, marking the subset of Indigenization (korenizatsiia) in the Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (YaASSR).

Focusing on their contributions to the 1925–1930 Complex expedition to the YaASSR, the work demonstrates that these Populists-turned-ethnographers were among the first Russian revolutionaries to extend their class-based rhetoric to Indigenous communities, anticipating Bolshevik attempts to promote Native languages and cultures under socialism. It also traces the transformation of the Sakha-Yakut heroic epic, Olonkho, from an oral tradition into a written folkloric record under the influence of the former exiles, contributing to the formation of a modern Sakha national identity. By placing Populists’ ethnographic and folkloric studies within a broader framework of colonial knowledge and statecraft, this study explores how these intermediaries mediated between imperial legacies and Indigenous agency, ultimately influencing Bolshevik policies toward ethnic minorities in the North.